He was, perhaps, the first known “born-again believer.” He was an ordinary working man by birth, a farmer who had trials in his family, and at one point managed a living as a rustic shepherd who simply minded his flocks by night.

But while sitting by the side of a river, he was given a religious experience. It changed his life and he spent the rest of his days telling other people about the wonders of his newfound, or at least deeply renewed, religious faith.

But this was no Bible evangelist or Christian who came to know the Lord by grace. This was Hesiod, who lived in the eighth century B.C., the first great evangelist of the pagan gods.

Hesiod came from a family that had moved from Asia Minor, or modern Turkey, to Greece, where he lived in a village named Ascra, which he described as an “accursed place, cruel in winter, hard in summer, never pleasant.”

In a legal dispute, he lost control of his inheritance, a family farm, because of an unjust ruler assigning his birthright to a worthless brother, who would later return to mooch off of the very Hesiod whom he once cheated in the courts. But while looking after some lambs in the field, Hesiod claimed to have been granted a revelation of none other than the nine divine Muses, goddesses who inspire men to sing divine song in praise of the gods.

Hesiod tells us of his religious experience when he saw the goddesses on the mountain, saying, “And one day they taught Hesiod glorious song while he was shepherding his lambs under holy Helicon, and this word first the goddesses said to me — the Muses of Olympus, daughters of Zeus who holds the aegis.”

They went on to say to Hesiod, “Shepherds of the wilderness, wretched things of shame, mere bellies, we know how to speak many false things as though they were true; but we know, when we will, to utter true things.”

He goes on to add, “So said the ready-voiced daughters of great Zeus, and they plucked and gave me a rod, a shoot of sturdy laurel, a marvelous thing, and breathed into me a divine voice to celebrate things that shall be and things there were aforetime; and they bade me sing of the race of the blessed gods that are eternally, but ever to sing of themselves both first and last. But why all this about oak or stone?”

This was to be the beginning of his new career, as a musician, a poet and a messenger of the story of the gods.

Hesiod went on to produce a number of poems, many of which we have only in fragmentary form. But two of the surviving poems are of great importance for historians and students of religion.

The first of these is his “Theogony,” an extended poem that describes the origins of the world, the births of the gods and their generations. For those familiar with Greek mythology, this is where we find the stories of the married union of the sky god Uranus and the earth mother Gaia, and the birth of their children, both monsters and Titans.

The revolt of the Titans against their father, and the usurpation of the Titan Cronus followed, who was in turn castrated and overthrown by his mighty son Zeus. The triumph of Zeus and the Olympian gods and goddesses, and the many offspring of the gods’ unions fill much of the poem.

Hesiod’s other great production was the “Works and Days,” an 800-line poem that is a manual on farming. In this text, Hesiod appeals to his worthless brother to devote himself to the land and work hard for a living, and also to justly divide the ancestral land between them.

He cannot resist adding more stories of the gods, and he explains why the gods make men work the land for a living.

Hesiod is also famous for being the first Greek poet to tell the wonderful story of Prometheus, as a way of showing how suffering came to the world. Prometheus had been the Titan who aided Zeus in his quest for dominance in the universe and was thus spared from condemnation with his brothers and sisters.

But Prometheus took pity of poor men and women, and gave them fire from heaven. For this crime, Prometheus was punished to suffer torment forever by being chained to a rock and daily an eagle flew out of heaven to rip out his liver. Zeus further punished man by sending the beautiful but brainless woman, named Pandora, with her box of woes to afflict men.

The reader might consider the long-term impact of these two poetic archetypes on Western literature: the icon of the suffering god who gave the gift of life to men, and the archetypal dumb blonde female who always gets things wrong. Hesiod might have been a visionary, but he also has a lot to answer for.

Hesiod also gives us the ancestor of our own Western work ethic, asserting that the gods bless with riches those who work hard and curse the lazy. Hesiod was addressing his less-than-energetic brother and those like him with his poem.

He says, “Both gods and men are angry with a man who lives idle, for in nature he is like the stingless drones who waste the labour of the bees, eating without working; but let it be your care to order your work properly, that in the right season your barns maybe full of victual. Through work men grow rich in flocks and substance, and working they are much better loved by the immortals. Work is no disgrace: it is idleness which is a disgrace. But if you work, the idle will soon envy you as you grow rich, for fame and renown attend on wealth. And whatever be your lot, work is best for you, if you turn your misguided mind away from other men’s property to your work and attend to your livelihood as I bid you. An evil shame is the needy man’s companion, shame which both greatly harms and prospers men: shame is with poverty, but confidence with wealth.”

One might smile at the Puritan work ethic emerging in pagan Greece in the year 750 B.C., but it has served the West well in many forms and cultures.

One wonders if the parents of my new students have admonished their children with modern versions of similar words. Perhaps they should.

Gregory Elder, a Redlands resident, is a professor of history and humanities at Moreno Valley College and a Roman Catholic priest. Write to him at Professing Faith, P.O. Box 8102, Redlands, CA 92375-1302, email him at askfathergregory@verizon.net or follow him on Twitter at Fatherelder.